that the gain resulting from a marriage-law controversy or a Kultur-Kampf infinitely outweighs its inconveniences to an administration. Few, indeed, are the journalists and thinkers on the Continent who can speak and write against a government measure with the freedom which is tolerated in the meanest priest. Lacordaire was silenced for calling Louis Napoleon a tyrant, but he submitted only because his Church was subservient to the usurper, and where he was simply ordered to change the form of his work, a lay journalist would have been imprisoned or sent to Cayenne. A few years later, the French clergy were freely comparing the head of the State to Pontius Pilate, and suffered no annoyance.
It is one thing, however, to feel that the Churches have been useful in past time as a counterpoise to autocracy, and quite another to wish that their authority should be maintained. As a rule, the Churches are in their very essence opposed to liberty of thought and conduct; while the State is gradually tending to become more and more tolerant of each. It has been noticed above that the law of life which the Churches seek to impose has been found intolerable. Two familiar instances will show what is meant. Every thoughtful student of history is aware that the Protestant Reformation was attended with a general dissolution of morals in those countries which did not provide adequately for the maintenance of ecclesiastical law.[1] The old Church discipline was relaxed or swept away; and while even
- ↑ "Of the following general facts I hold superfluous proof (1) that after the religious revolution in Protestant Germany, there began and long prevailed a fearful dissolution of morals; (2) that of this moral corruption there were two principal foci—Wittenberg and Hesse."—Discussions on Philosophy, by Sir W. Hamilton, pp, 497-499, note. Compare Ranke, Gesch. der Deutschen Reformation, Band v. SS. 435-437.
